My faith in Christ was settled at 18. After that, my struggle was not with belief as much as with believers. In college, I wrestled mightily with indentifying myself openly as a Christian. Others, both in the culture & on my campus, had made the label toxic. Christians were...

...not respected. Some Christians on campus welcomed the disrespect as authentication of their faith. After all, Jesus was disrespected too. What they missed, however, was that Jesus was maligned for his compassion, love, association with the lowly & sinners, & for rebuking...

...the powerful & self-righteous. Christianity on my campus was maligned for being intolerant, bigoted, unintellectual, partisan, arrogant, mean, & condemning. This reputation was earned by the behavior of some believers at my school, but more by the national figures leading...

...the Religious Right. Simply put, the disrespect didn’t come because Christians were emulating Jesus, but because they were not. That’s why I struggled. To identify myself with this twisted anti-Christ Christianity would be a betrayal of the true Christ to whom I belonged...

...That was 1994. Today, I have teenage kids including one attending my alma mater. As we talk about faith, I hear echoes of my struggle in them & my heart breaks. The idolatry & hypocrisy that existed in American Christianity a generation ago I now far, far worse. My kids know..